If people behaving badly are among the most compelling characters on the big screen, then Martin Scorsese’s “The Wolf of Wall Street” should be the most entertaining motion picture ever made. It’s not, but just try to stop watching it. This is the most unhinged film Scorsese has made to date, and for this director that’s saying something.

The mobsters in Scorsese’s 1990 film “Goodfellas” break the law at every turn. The Wall Street honchos in “Wolf” are no strangers to illegalities either, but most of what they get away with is just very bad behavior. The victims of their financial malfeasance are never seen. Scorsese and his frequent filmmaking partner Leonardo DiCaprio, who stars, made the odd decision to make a comedy out of this true story. You will laugh at the excesses, at least until the movie exhausts you, and it will. But there’s a message here, too, about how unspeakably ugly greed can become. Rated R for sequences of strong sexual content, graphic nudity, drug use and language throughout, and for some violence. 179 min.

New movies

“Delivery Man.” Whatever happened to Vince Vaughn’s career? Granted, the actor wasn’t exactly poised to become the next Daniel Day-Lewis, but the quality of his movies has taken a decided turn for the worse of late. In this comedy, of sorts, Vaughn plays a man who learns he’s fathered 533 children, via anonymous fertility clinic donations, and grapples with whether to come forward. The plot has some real problems, and a compulsion to go all gooey with sentimentality ultimately kills the laughs. As for Vaughn, he’s now one step closer to leaving these starring roles behind for character parts. Rated PG-13 for thematic elements, sexual content, some drug material, brief violence and language. 105 min.

A couple of fine foreign-language titles arrive on home video this week. “The Past,” an Iranian title, in telling a simple story of familial drama hits some impressively universal themes, and is just the latest reminder of how adept Iranian filmmakers are at character development. Rated PG-13 for mature thematic material and brief strong language. In French with English subtitles. 130 min.

It’s difficult to pin down precisely what “The Great Beauty” is about. The winner of this year’s Academy Award for Best Foreign-Language Film it is nothing so much as a sumptuously visual ode to Rome, and in particular the Rome imagined by the likes of, say, the Italian filmmaker Federico Fellini. Book your airline tickets now. Not rated. In Spanish, Chinese, Italian and Japanese, with English subtitles. 142 min.

Television

The second season of the HBO comedy series “Veep,” starring Julia Louis-Dreyfus, the one “Seinfeld” star to maintain a viable career since that series ended in 1998, is decidedly more assured than the first one. But this political show retains its viciousness as it depicts a vice president’s office that may be the most stressful workplace in America. The nasty tone can grow wearing, but the show’s determination to go to some very weird places keeps it fresh. 279 min.

Keegan-Michael Key and Jordan Peele are two funny guys, as exhibited by their Comedy Central series “Key & Peele,” the first two seasons of which have arrived on home video. Both comedians are biracial, and that’s the source of most of their humor. There’s clearly some rich material there, but “Key & Peele” would be better if it peered beyond that comedic horizon every once in a while. 396 min.

Old movies

It’s been 30 years since Scorsese’s “The King of Comedy” was released, which occasions this week’s Blu-ray debut. The fact that the picture’s subject matter, the darker emotional recesses we visit when we obsess about fame, is as timely as ever doesn’t speak so much to this film’s foresight as it does our dreary times. This is a vaguely unpleasant, never really satisfying movie to watch. It’s highly atypical of Scorsese. But Robert De Niro, Jerry Lewis and Sandra Bernhard deliver remarkably committed performances. If you’ve never seen “The King of Comedy,” any efforts to do so will be rewarded, but be alert for the funky aftertaste. 109 min.